What is a Virtual Sales Assistant Chatbot?

Exploring Chatbots

If you are a regular browser of the internet, chances are you will have come into contact with a chatbot. You may not have even realised it, given the variation of forms that they can take on contemporary websites.

Chatbots are becoming ubiquitous online and it is easy to understand why. Gone are the days of infuriating chatbots that couldn’t understand even the most basic of requests. These days, chatbots have evolved into useful website features that can book appointments, sell products and answer customer enquiries. This improvement is largely due to the advancements made in the natural language processing field of AI.

What can Sales Chatbots do?

The primary purpose of any chatbot is to understand and have the capability to respond to human conversation. Within the context of performing a sales role, these chatbots can perform the following tasks:

Lead generation

Lead generation is one of the most common tasks asked of virtual sales assistant chatbots. Leads often need ‘warming’ to take them from the interested stage through to making a purchase. 

This warming up often involves numerous questions about the product or service, making sure that it is the right purchase for the customer. Virtual assistant chatbots can be trained to understand the commonly asked questions relating to the items, so that they can answer with convincing confidence to the customer enquiry.

A key benefit of using a chatbot for lead generation is the round-the-clock support. Leads will often want to be attended to in the moment, rather than waiting for the next available salesperson to contact them. Not only is this delay frustrating for the customer, it could also mean they contact a competitor who might be able to answer their questions more promptly, losing a potential sale. 

Chatbots on the other hand are operational at all hours of the day, able to handle an enquiry from a lead immediately. For example, if someone was to request a demo of a SaaS product, the chatbot would be able to ask relevant questions and provide answers that will help the customer to understand if the solution is right for them.

Appointment booking

Even businesses that use chatbots may decide to place their face in their human workforce to handle customer enquiries. 

Even so, the chatbot can still play a role in improving administrative efficiency by handling the appointment booking process. 

When trained to ask for availability and synced up with the schedules of the sales teams, these virtual assistants can book appointments directly into the calendar. 

Whilst there are many fantastic online calendar tools such as Calendly, these AI assistants go beyond appointment booking by offering multi-functionality. Not only do they book appointments, they can answer FAQs, provide support and even recommend specific salespeople based on the preferences and requirements of the customer. 

If the customer expresses a wish to book an appointment to see the functionality of a certain feature, the chatbot can understand this and book an appointment with an expert in that feature. 

Upselling and cross-selling

Sales teams often earn their keep in their upselling abilities, what other complimentary or supplementary bolt-ons they can convince customers to purchase. 

Whilst many e-commerce stores will recommend similar products, it is the virtual assistant chatbots that most successfully engage customers. 

As chatbots can be trained to have a deep understanding of the conversations they are having, these AI-powered virtual assistants can recommend products most closely of interest to the customer. If the customer appears to have little knowledge of the product, the chatbot could pick this up as a sign to sell a related training course or guide.

Sales aftercare

Ask any salesperson the worst part of their job, and they’ll likely respond it is the aftercare that comes once a sale has been made. Customers will often have a whole host of questions relating to the installation, use or maintenance of the product they have just purchased. Sales teams will often try to pass these onto the customer service team, who whilst they might have poor product knowledge, do not have the relationship with the customer so will need to spend time asking about the purchase. Not only is this a frustrating waste of time for the customer, it is also wasting time and money for the company.

Alternatively, the virtual assistant chatbot will quickly ascertain the purchase history of the customer, and will be trained to offer assistance for common enquiries. 

This often involves the chatbot being trained on the instruction manuals and user guides, so that it can provide tailored advice to help the customer set up and use the product or service.

Benefits of adding a Virtual Assistant Chatbot to your Sales Team

• 24/7 availability 365 days a week - chatbots are the team members who don’t need a holiday!
• Scalability - chatbots can handle multiple enquiries at once and not get flustered. Custom chatbots can be developed to handle enquiries on a vast scale without slowing down
• Specialist knowledge - by training a chatbot on a closed dataset, you can be sure that your sales chatbot will only have the information you need it to, rather than the general noise of irrelevant data online
• Efficiency - chatbots are on hand to answer queries whenever you need them, and have the capability to recall information in the blink of an eye. No more waiting around for sales people to respond or customer service teams to find the relevant information.

You can discover more information on the unique benefits a website virtual assistant chatbot can elicit by clicking here.

Develop a chatbot for your sales team

If you are tempted by a sales virtual assistant chatbot, NetGeist is here to help. Specialising in NLP solutions, NetGeist creates customizable chatbots for organisations to streamline and simplify their communication channels.

To interact with a working example of their chatbot solutions, chat with Robert on the Neurotechnology website.